MOTOR RACING: Despite a difficult year for his team - a reduction in itsworkforce, loss of sponsors, car problems and an underperforming driver -Eddie Jordan, typically, still believes he is ahead of the game. Justin Hynes reports.

Jordan Grand Prix's head of PR is telling me that Eddie Jordan will talk to me sometime during the day. The Formula One team boss hasn't been avoiding me exactly, but he's a notoriously hard guy to pin down, a constant maelstrom of frenetic activity bouncing from grip-and-grin sessions with current sponsors to meetings with future targets, staging the sort of sales pitches that make the assault tactics of Glengarry Glen Ross look like a parish cake sale.

"Any idea what time?" I ask.

"I don't know," she replies, "but he will call you today, he's in a good mood."

Good moods are not something associated with Jordan these days. Sure, EJ's ebullience, the boundless optimism that comes to the fore in any crisis, is normally about as damage-resistant as inch-thick steel but in the last eight months he and his team have taken a battering.

Holed beneath the water-line by the twin torpedoes of financial turbulence and racing ineffectiveness, Jordan has limped from grand prix harbour to harbour, hoping to stay afloat until home port could be found and a thorough re-fit arranged.

In March, his team quietly issued a press release stating that it would be shedding 40 staff, about 15 per cent of its workforce, as part of a rationalisation programme required to ensure the team stayed in business and racing in the future.

The outflow from Jordan wasn't just its own being shed. Partners too were walking. Going were Honda, the Japanese motor manufacturer rethinking their F1 programme and opting to solely supply BAR. Also leaving was Deutsche Post, the German company that had, via title sponsorship through its subsidiary DHL, stepped into the breach left by title sponsor Benson & Hedges, who stepped aside at the end of 2001.

And in the midst of the financial dyspepsia, the team's ulcers were being inflamed by undistinguished showings on track.

Another vacancy was left by the ousting of designer Eghbal Hamidy, whose flawed EJ12 design required surgery almost as soon as it had been whipped out from under the spotlights at the team's strangely heartless 2002 launch in a Brussels aircraft hangar.

Let down by the intractable chassis and a heavy engine, Giancarlo Fisichella limped to a sequence of mid-season fifth places which, after a long sequence of technical melt-downs, were greeted as triumphs of epic proportions.

It was merely a small summer fling with success. By season's end he had earned an average qualifying position of 10th. He took home just seven points. Rubens Barrichello, the championship's second-placed man, scored 11 times that figure. Champion Schumacher over 20 times the amount.

Team-mate Takuma Sato was faring worse, failing to finish most of his early-season races, a record which culminated in a massive smash involving Nick Heidfeld in Austria, which resulted in howls for his dismissal from all quarters, despite the fact that the accident was entirely the German driver's fault.

Ironically, perhaps, it was Sato who rescued Jordan's season, a truly heroic drive at his home grand prix stealing sixth place in the constructors' championship.

After that, home port finally beckoned. But there was no respite. Deutsche Post confirmed their withdrawal from a reputed €23 million sponsorship deal and no details of a replacement were forthcoming.

So why is Eddie Jordan in a good mood?

"It has been a very difficult year, both for me and the team, for a number of reasons," he says. "There has been a huge change in direction for the team and we made early decisions on a number of key issues facing the team. Now, I think, financially, we're in a very good position. We have enough money to see us through. We have the resources to get there next year, enough to build a new car. We have the Ford deal in place. We're ready to get on with things."

It has to be conceded that he has a point, although it is achingly thin and barely drawing breath. When Jordan announced its restructuring, it had the smack of a death knell, a signal that the team's high-society ambitions to race at the front of the grid were being abandoned in favour of survival, a willingness to grub around with Formula One's middle classes. Eight months later, in the light of the collapse of Arrows, the vicious cuts being made at Jaguar, the frailty of Minardi, Jordan looks positively perspicacious.

"Maybe it had something to do with my old banking rudimentaries," he laughs. "But I think now might have been too late. If you look at what Jaguar are doing, I think they may be in for some tough times. We maybe saw the writing on the wall a little bit and even though it was a difficult season we managed to get some kind of a result by getting sixth in the championship."

Result is a strong word. Surely, the Japanese Grand Prix's outcome was in the grand oriental tradition of saving face rather than scoring a resounding success?

"It's no great joy," he admits, "but it could have been a lot worse and I think we do have to thank Taku for getting us to that sixth. It wasn't a vintage year though."

And he is willing to shoulder responsibility for the sour taste left by the past season. "There was a lot of pruning that needed to be done. I'll admit I maybe took my eye off the ball and I needed to get back to the heart of the team to concentrate on the fundamentals of racing. I'm really pleased now, Jordan is in great shape."

Next year will be different. In 2003 Jordan will race without a works engine for the first time in three seasons, a commodity previously judged by Jordan to be the only hope of survival for a Formula One team.

The 70-degree Cosworth engine they will receive may currently be regarded as one of the finest units on the grid and could, if the Jordan EJ13 is a good chassis, propel Jordan-Ford forward early on in the season. But as constant development by works outfits thunders on during the season Jordan are likely to be left behind - a story that has become painfully familiar at Ferrari-powered Sauber who regularly score heavily in the first seven races and slowly but inexorably fade as the season goes on.

Jordan insists that the Ford deal, which will be paid for via a tortuous business-to-business arrangement brokered by the Irishman between Ford Europe and Deutsche Post, is a huge bonus for his team.

"Despite all those things that went on during the year, I think there were some positives, some good things happened. The Ford deal alone made it worth while. That's the key for us. It's a big step forward for us."

He is also at pains to make clear that the German company's departure from Jordan will in no way affect the engine deal in the latter years of its life.

"The deal was handed to Ford a while ago and we were able to tell them at the time that we were going to have continuity problems with Deutsche Post and they were fine with that. There is no problem with this deal based around Deutsche Post's decision to leave."

The loss of the Deutsche Post income has hit the team hard, however, harder than the spin will allow and replacement of the lost revenue will be hard.

And Jordan knows it.

"The problem is that some teams simply do not need it and there's a scenario that develops whereby they are willing to let major sponsorship deals go for a lot less money than they're worth simply because for a major manufacturer it's not necessary. But it's the lifeblood of Formula One and it is difficult. But we'll keep going."

Once again he's fishing for a Jordan upside, like a scrapyard dealer seeing four good tyres on a junker. "Funnily, I think this is where Jordan might have a slight edge in the way we have gone with Ford. I definitely think there's something more romantic about a Jordan-Ford than some of the manufacturer-only teams," he says, warming to his pitch.

"Because we're a privateer team I think people have a respect for it. There's a more gung-ho atmosphere surrounding the team. It's the same at Williams. People look at BMW's involvement with Williams and see Frank Williams and the pure racing pedigree and that's what inspires them and by default BMW get the same reaction because they're allied with real racers."

Romantic racers Jordan may be, but as the old saw runs, love goes out the window when the money runs out and Jordan still have to cut their 2003 cloth accordingly. This, in all likelihood, means opting for the new rule which allows teams who undertake to do less than 10 days' testing a year to test on race weekends on Friday mornings before free practice.

It is an option, which though initially attractive, could see the gap between the haves of Ferrari, who will continue to test in every light of daylight they can squeeze from their private Fiorano track, and McLaren and Williams and those who, through financial constraints, can develop only during three hours on a Friday morning, once a fortnight.

Jordan admits his team is likely to take up the option but denies that it will hinder his team's competitiveness.

"I would imagine that we will be one of the teams to take up the new rule on testing," he says. "I don't imagine that it will have a negative effect on the smaller teams though. I do think you could get the same value from Friday testing (at a race circuit).

When the time does come to put the new EJ13 on the track for shakedown in January, the thorny issue of just who will partner Fisichella will have to be addressed.

The releasing of Sato to a test driver's role at BAR last week, reduced the field by one but mystery still surrounds just who has the money Jordan requires of a second driver. Eddie Irvine has bounced to the front of the pack again on the strength of his favoured status in the eyes of likely title sponsor Benson & Hedges, although a compromise British driver could be found in Anthony Davidson.

Three Brazilians are also apparently waving bulging wallets in Jordan's direction; former Arrows man Enrique Bernoldi, former Sauber driver Felippe Massa and former Jordan tester Ricardo Zonta.

Of all the candidates, Massa would appeal most in terms of racing potential. With competitive times against the highly-rated Nick Heidfeld at Sauber, Massa has proved he is capable of jousting with the front-runners. A full season of F1 under his belt should also have tamed the wilder urges of the quick young Brazilian, especially as it was his occasional recklessness that lost him a second year at Sauber.

Jordan may not have the luxury of opting for the driver with the most potential, however. With the boom years of the late 1990s now but a hazy memory, Jordan had returned to a paddock where money talks. In the current environment that gives the ever-lucky Irvine the edge.

"It has always been the case in Formula One that commercial considerations affect driver line-ups," says Jordan. "Look at Jaguar. They've opted for two rookies. It could be great, it could be a disaster. If I could, though, I would prefer not to rely on a rookie but that option may not be open to us."

Whoever the second driver is, he will step into the EJ13 in Melbourne with a heavy burden - transforming Jordan from a team now widely perceived as being one of Formula One's endangered species back into the predatory shark they so wishfully adorn the nose cones of their cars with.

"This is the first car Gary Anderson and Henri Durand have designed together and I have to say it looks stunning," Jordan says of the upcoming EJ13. "The engine is great and is going together with the car really well. It's a fantastic looking car. But I would say that!"

Yes, I believe he would.